My old preferred method was sticking an aspirator up ny nose, and sucking stuff out...or as my daughter used to scream when she was little, "accchhh, you're sucking my brains out, are you trying to kill me?"
One of the things that was always anathema to me..snotty nose kids with green crust around their nose holes.. or raw pink skin above their lip from nasal drips. She never had that problem thanks to my torture/aspirator method.
And yes, since I did it to myself, too..it did feel sometimes like it was sucking my brains out, all the way to the top of my forehead.
Hmmm. I have not tried that one. Maybe I’ll do that in the future in case my astragalus fails me.
Mom did that to us. Our colds didn’t last long, up went the aspirator, followed by “soothing” warm Vicks and a pad of warm Vicks on the chest and back.